Burrowed pipes are great for getting liquids past builds and other such obstacles, though they are very material-inefficient and they are not easy to work with when hooking up new connections. Regular pipes, though very efficient to lay-out for refining lines, block pathing and are very frustrating to deal with just quality-of-life wisely. They also make it so separate liquid lines must be spaced out quite a bit and make it very easy to accidentally join different liquids together.
What if instead we had suspended pipelines, like the ones used in real life for long distance transport (and also around refineries, just for convenience).
Proposed mechanics:
- Crafted using a regular pipe segment and 1 steel.
- Do not block pathing for players, enemies or vehicles.
- Cannot be built on the same tile as any other structures.
- Suspended pipes do not connect directly to regular pipes.
- Can only connect to regular pipes using a special adapter segment (which is either its own craftable item, or, more ideally, is placed automatically when placing a regular pipe segment next to a suspended pipe) - essentially a vertical L junction.
- The ground junction segment otherwise acts like a regular pipe (blocks pathing, auto-connects to other pipes, buildings, etc).
- Rotatable, like belts, but not directional, like regular pipes. I.e. they can be built in parallel, next to each-other without having them fuse into a grid.
- Can be shot at / destroyed by players and enemies, again, much like belts.
It may well be possible to implement such pipes as more or less a special kind of "belt" item. Like a belt, it allows entities to move above it (though we draw them below the item instead), they just don't modify the entity's velocity. Like a belt, they can placed in a directional manner (though it so happens there is no difference between facing directions). Also like belts, they could be built on top of stone or concrete which does affect entity velocity. The big differences really boil down into having to inherit the fluid dispersion mechanics (which are not exclusives to pipes anyway - c.f. storage tanks), the drawing order and the special ground junction segment.
Anyway, I really think it would make for easier to build, more compact and elegant, and overall just more pleasant refining factories without really introducing any new gameplay concepts or requiring new and specific UI.
